Adobe Max 2009 will preview the future of the Flash platform

Adobe Max 2009 will finally start in a few weeks. For the past few months, I’ve heard small bits of information about the future of the Flash platform, often complemented by someone from Adobe saying we’d have more information at MAX – making the event sound more and more important each time around.

I am suprized more folks haven’t dug into the MAX session scheduler. The future of Flash Platform is there. http://bit.ly/pFz34

So what is the future of the Flash Platform? Well, apart from the usual stablished/educational content, this is what caught my attention from the list:

GPU acceleration for the next Flash Player: known, but may only apply to mobile devices.

GPU Acceleration in the next Flash Player: Learn what’s possible with GPU acceleration in the next version of Flash Player. NVIDIA and Adobe collaborated to develop GPU acceleration that enables Flash Player to run fluidly on battery-powered mobile devices that are changing the face of computing. See how GPUs will change your perceptions of what is possible on mobile and how you can create content that taps into this significant opportunity.

The next version of AIR (AIR 2) will have different distribution methods

Explore Deployment and Distribution Options for Adobe AIR Applications: Learn how to get your AIR applications to your users and how to keep them up to date. We will discuss important considerations for distribution on the Internet or an intranet, including impacts on your auto-update mechanism. We will cover existing deployment options such as badge installation and IBM Tivoli support. Finally, we will explore the new deployment options that will be available in Adobe AIR 2, including the native installer support required to use some of the advanced new AIR 2 APIs.

Flash 10 and AIR are coming to mobile platforms

Preview: Flex for Mobile Devices: Hear directly from the team involved in enabling Flex on mobile devices regarding the challenges faced and progress made in optimization, components, and tooling. In this session, you’ll see Flex running on smartphones and learn how to create your first mobile Flex application.

Building Mobile Applications with Adobe AIR: Learn how Adobe is working to bring Adobe AIR development out of the desktop and onto a mobile phone near you. We will cover how the AIR SDK and platform will evolve to add capabilities to help developers mobile enable, test, and publish their content. Mobile computing and mobile applications provide publishers and developers with exciting opportunities to get their products into the pockets of millions of people.

Designing Applications for Desktops and Mobile Devices with Adobe AIR: See how Adobe AIR has made it possible for web developers to build cross-platform desktop applications. Learn how the platform is expanding to enable the delivery of applications not just for desktop operating systems, but also for mobile devices.

More information on Flash Player for TVs and other embedded devices

Flash for the Digital Home: Flash on TV!: Discover Adobe’s optimized implementation of the Flash runtime that enables the delivery of HD video and rich applications to Internet-connected TVs, set-top boxes, Blu-ray players, and other devices that are connected to the television. Learn about the platform and supported features, and view some sample TV applications that highlight these features. This session should inspire content providers, developers, and designers who want to take advantage of Flash in the TV space.

Multi-touch: this sounds like it means using third-party multi-touch devices, something that’s already possible (instead of a native API, which would be real news), but should still be interesting

Multi-touch and the Flash Platform: Discover what you can do with multi-touch and the Flash Platform. Learn how you can build your own multi-touch table for a fraction of the cost of commercial products. We’ll also discuss an approach to building multi-touch applications for the Flash Platform on these tables that will open up an entire new world of possibilities not only for experimentation, but for your customers and clients as well.

Multitouch Development with Flex: Explore new techniques for interacting with software and devices with the latest capabilities of the Flash Platform. Multitouch experiences are taking the software world by storm, from the 2008 election night coverage to the latest bars and clubs. This session will explore the multitouch capabilities of Flash Player and demonstrate how you can take advantage of them within your own applications.

And other presentations that should be of note and will hopefully be released into the wild post-MAX:

Roadmap: Flash Platform Runtimes: Come see the roadmap for the Flash Platform runtimes: Flash Player and Adobe AIR. Learn about what the runtime teams are working on today for delivery soon, and hear how Adobe envisions the future direction of the runtimes.

Top Secret Flash Player Session: Sorry, we can’t tell you what this one is about. If we told you we’d have to… But we will say that this is one session you won’t want to miss. More information will be available on-site at MAX. And now that you have read the description, the session will self-destruct.

What’s Coming in Adobe AIR 2: Adobe AIR allows developers to build rich Internet applications (RIAs) that run outside the browser on multiple operating systems. In this session, you will learn about the planned capabilities of the upcoming release of Adobe AIR 2.

Share this post:

Previous post

Next post

9 responses

GPU acceleration for the next Flash Player: known, but may only apply to mobile devices.

Jesus, didn’t the community make it OBVIOUSLY, TRANSPARENTLY clear that hardware acceleration is the first thing Flash needs back from the days of FPL7? Wait, I think it was request number one even before that.

Totally agree with archont. Whole flash world is watching. 3D in flash is cruical. why? Not even because 3D itself but that little point of decision for new developers to choose right platform. Competition is tough. I love flash. But reality is if Adobe won’t push their player way forward, they could loose big part of flash developers(I don’t think that people will wait another 1,5-2 years for next version because even grandma javascript will be maybe fater that time). Is not always that the best win. Better(more mature) language and speed is what MANY developers vaiting for and desperately need. Please Adobe LISTEN.

Yawn. I agree with the others like tlevieux – deployment options over better memory management and Global Exception Handling? Com’on Adobe….this is getting old. (And no offense this this blog owner – we’re just whining at Adobe)

To those complaining about missing features from Flash Player 11, realize that at MAX, while there’s going to be a beta for Flash Player 10 mobile and a likely going to be AIR 2.0 beta, there’s likely not going to be a beta for Flash Player 11. Without a beta Adobe is not going to have a session on any new Flash Player 11 features giving a more in-depth look.

Ryan also says:
“With the next version of the Flash Player we’re planning to release not only Mac/Win/Linux but also the mobile runtimes at a single time with one codebase so there’s not a discrepancy in functionality.”

So not only will we be getting multitouch in the desktop version of Flash Player 11, I imagine this also means GPU rendering.

I think they should spend more time fixing the existing bugs instead of creating new features.. – We don’t need tons of new features, we just need it to work right and if they keep increasing the number of features without improving the quality they will loose market..

“Adobe AIR allows developers to build rich Internet applications (RIAs) that run outside the browser on multiple operating systems”

I hate it when people say RIA blah blah this, RIA blah blah that… The sentence sounds as if you are ONLY able to create RIAs with AIR! Sorry for the negativity but Adobe (and with them all RIA worshippers) should realize that AIR should not only be a platform for only that but for any kind of application and for games in particular.